Going for Broke: Oakland Hills Friends to Lovers Romantic Comedy (Friends with Benefits) by Gretchen Galway, Lucy Riot

she will be.”
    Her eyes darted to the honey mustard salad dressing, imagining how much better he’d look with it splashed all over his face. “That’s a stupid thing to say.”
    “I’m just quoting you.”
    “I never said that.”
    His eyebrows shot up. “Oh yes, you certainly did. I have an excellent memory. You were wearing a green sweater at the time. And those big dangly frog earrings she gave you.”
    She hadn’t worn those earrings since high school. A vague memory teased the basement of her mind. “They were newts,” was all she could think to say at first. And then, “Jane gave them to me for my eighth grade graduation. She told me there was a lot of pressure to grow up too fast and she wanted me to remember how to be a kid, how to have fun. Jane has always been awesome.”
    “I agree,” he said.
    “Then—” Then why’d you break her heart? she’d almost asked. “You don’t act like you think she’s awesome.”
    “It didn’t work out between us, but I admired her.” He shrugged. “I always will. Which was what I was saying right before you said that about wanting her to be proud of you.”
    The memory came back in a rush. She’d been seventeen, a couple of years after the breakup, and he was home from college for Christmas. Curious to see him again, she’d jumped at the chance to go to his house with her mom.
    While their mothers had wrapped presents and gossiped in the kitchen, Billie and Ian had played air hockey in the Coopers’ rec room, having a great time, although she’d felt a little guilty about having so much fun with her sister’s ex.
    But only a little. It had been a difficult time to live in Jane’s shadow. Billie had just failed physics for the first time, and algebra for the third, and was learning to accept she wouldn’t be going on to Berkeley or Davis or Sonoma State like her best friends.
    Unlike Billie, Jane had always been perfect. Not only had she been top of the class, but she’d never gotten a B, let alone an F. Her winning streak continued uninterrupted to this day.
    Except with men. She still had trouble with that. Billie thought it had everything to do with the man who’d just kissed her.
    “Well?” he asked now. “Is it coming back to you?”
    The kettle whistled. She walked over to it, shooting him a glance over her shoulder. “Maybe a little.”
    That day at his house long ago, she’d thought maybe he could understand. Maybe he’d broken up with Jane because all her perfection had been annoying to him, too. Maybe he’d even been jealous, she’d thought. And so, in a moment of weakness, she’d knocked the puck to him across the table and shared her insecurities with him.
    “I wasn’t bullshitting you,” he said now. “She really was proud of you.”
    She’d gobbled up every word he’d shared over the air hockey table. He’d listed her qualities—her people skills, her sense of humor, her generosity, her fluency in Spanish, which she’d learned to talk to her grandfather—that Jane had told him she’d admired in her. He’d gone on and on, telling her how much her big sister wished she could be a little more like her .
    Jane was like that, often seeing the best in people and then emulating them so she could improve herself.
    Unlike Billie. If Billie ever improved herself, it was an accident. She never set out to accomplish something for the sake of being amazing. Her vision didn’t extend that far into the future. What she did, she did because she felt like it. She wasn’t much better now than she’d been as a teenager.
    “I was such a fuckup,” Billie said, getting out a mug.
    “You were not,” he said. “You just weren’t a good student. There’s a difference.”
    It wasn’t fair of him to get nice right at the moment she most needed to pour salad dressing on his head.
    “Thanks,” she said softly, keeping her back to him. She got out a second mug, this one for him.
    He walked over and stood directly behind her, so close